Philip Dodd, founder of consultancy Made in China, believes the cultural shift will have moved to Asia in the next 60 or 70 years. Liu Zhe / China Daily

China's economic might will sooner or later be reflected in the field of culture, consultant says

Philip Dodd believes China is going to experience a cultural explosion over the next decade.

The 62-year-old, a leading radio arts broadcaster in the UK who also runs the cultural consultancy Made in China, insists it will be a phenomenon that impacts the rest of the world.

"There are going to be 600 million middle-class consumers in China by 2020. Historical experience suggests that as you become richer, you want more and more cultural goods and services.

"If that is true, the demand in China for cultural goods and services is going to grow at an exponential rate."

Dodd was speaking in the lobby of The Peninsula Hotel in Beijing on a typical seven- or eight-day visit to China he has made every month since 2004 when he formed Made in China, notching up nearly 100 visits.

"For me getting on a plane is like getting on a bus. I don't think about it anymore. It is just what I do. I am sure there will come a moment when my batteries will run down and I won't want to see another airplane," he says.

"But at the moment I have a really interesting life. It is a privilege to be alive and involved - no matter how modestly - at a moment when the axis of the world is shifting."

This axis shifting, according to Dodd, is the move from the dominance of American and Hollywood culture to a new era in which that of China and other Asian countries will hold sway.

"If you think of the 20th century, our fascination with American culture followed the rise of the economic power of America and I see every sign that in the next 60 or 70 years the cultural shift will have moved to Asia," he says.

But could Chinese film studios start producing films for international consumption just like Hollywood?

"There is a lot of the world that doesn't speak English. There is Indonesia, Korea and all these other kind of places. The Chinese film industry can be very big there," he says.

Dodd, the son of a South Yorkshire coalminer, has been a leading figure in the arts and cultural world for many years.

After an initial career as a university lecturer, he went into journalism, as deputy editor of the New Statesman and then editor of Sight & Sound, the film magazine.

He is best known for his broadcasting career, presenting such programs as Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3, the UK's arts and classical music station to which he lends his somewhat individualistic voice, which owes something to his north country upbringing.

"I think it would be fair to say that in several ways I have a distinctive voice," he says, laughing.

He first came to China in 1998 with then British prime minister Tony Blair as director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), a center in London which promotes cutting-edge art.

"I was reluctant to come but I said I would if you let me rebuild the ICA in shopping malls in Beijing and Shanghai and to my amazement the British Council, which was the sponsoring agency, said okay. It was at a time when there were no galleries of any sort in China," he says.

The staging was a success and eventually led to Dodd setting up Made in China, which acts as a consultant and adviser to municipal authorities and leading arts bodies in China and also the UK.

It has acted as an adviser of Art HK, one of the leading art fairs in Asia, and the Shanghai eArts Festival, a leading digital arts festival, and was creative consultant to the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. It is currently working with a large Chinese corporation to develop a museum in southern China.

The business operates from offices in London, Beijing and Shanghai and employs a number of designers. His co-director and partner Enrica Costamagna lives and works in Guangdong province.

Dodd says one of the roles of Made in China is to help give the Chinese the expertise to stage major arts events.

"The thing that China needs now above all is the software to complement the hardware. The Chinese government has been good at building museums and other structures but that is essentially the easy bit. In order to put on a good exhibition, you also need the curators, the markets, the branders, the funders, the conservationists and all these kinds of people. China now needs to skill up in these areas," he says.

One initiative by Made in China is what is termed The Bridge, a series of network clubs around the UK for some of the UK's 120,000 Chinese students to meet British creative businesses.

"It puts the large community of Chinese students in contact with creative businesses out of which they might get internship experience and other opportunities. The businesses themselves have the chance to get a Chinese person on board which might prove useful in doing business in China."

Dodd says the West has not sufficiently come to terms with the fact that China is about to become a powerful voice in the world, not just politically but culturally.

"I remember a Chinese friend of mine going to London and going to see then London mayor Ken Livingstone," he recalls.

"Livingstone told him New York was the center of America but that London was the center of the world. My Chinese friend asked me whether this was an example of English arrogance. He said: 'Does he not know that in Shanghai or Mumbai, London does not feel like the center of the world?'"

Dodd says Chinese influence is already evident in the UK and other major Western centers.

"In cultural terms everyone wanted to see Hollywood films, wear blue denim and eat hamburgers. The consumption of Chinese and Indian food has risen by 35 percent over the past five years in Britain. In London now there is a Chinese medicine shop on every high street. Nobody thinks of that," he says.

Dodd says this all could pale into insignificance compared to what is happening in China itself.

"I think over the next 20 years the demand for cultural goods and services will rocket as it did in America a century or so ago. It is part of the process of moving from survival mode to leisure mode," he says.

He adds that a lot of what is happening in China today in terms of culture has echoes from the emergence of the United States as a major economic force.

"In about 1850 (Charles) Dickens went over to America and said 'stop stealing my copyright'. But less than 100 years later Europe was worshiping American arts and cinema. It may take just 50 years for that to happen with Chinese culture," he says.

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn